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Camille Sands is a 69-year-old Florida great-grandmother who drives a hearse instead of a car, has a fondness for boots and skull-embellished clothing, struggles not to curse and is once again stripping as the stage persona she adopted 48 years ago: Camille 2000, “the girl for yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

She’s among the women profiled in Toronto director Rama Rau’s Hot Docs-opening film League of Exotique Dancers, where stereotypes about age, beauty and objectification drop like sequined costumes and feather boas.

The documentary has its world premiere Thursday.

As much a history of burlesque as a collection of personal stories of challenge and triumph wrapped in a powerful feminist message, there are equal amounts of peel and reveal as outspoken tassel-twirling trailblazers, now in their 60s, 70s and beyond, come out of retirement to perform as honourees at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

Sands and 68-year-old Judith Stein of Nelson, B.C., known as the “Grand Beaver of Canadian Burlesque,” all but took over a dining room at the swank Windsor Arms Hotel Tuesday for a media day ahead of the film’s premiere. They shared stories, flirted with the waiter and posed provocatively (with a wink) swathed in heavy leopard-print curtains.

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Rau, who was at Hot Docs last year with No Place to Hide: The Rehtaeh Parsons Story, said she’s only interested in making films that deal with race or gender issues. She was inspired to make the doc by her obsessions with both vaudeville and legendary stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (legendary peelers Lili St. Cyr and Rose La Rose also appear in the doc), ending up with “so many amazing stories” when she spent time with the hall of famers.

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Toronto director Rama Rau says she wanted to explore aging and beauty in her documentary 'League of Exotique Dancers.' The film opens at Hot Docs on Thursday.

Take African American dancer Toni Elling, who helped break the colour barrier in clubs and whose elegant “parading, posing and peeling” could have been lifted from a production of the musical and film based on Lee’s life, Gypsy.

The women were taking their clothes off, but it was on their terms.

“I refuse to believe men were in charge,” says Holiday O’Hara in the doc. “I never believed that.”

“I just missed that generation, which I regret,” said Rau. “This is the generation of change and, for me, it was important not just to remind us of the rich history that was but also what happened to the women today. I think it’s very important in the sense of getting a historical sense of entertainment.”

Rau used an all-female crew to make the film, including cinematographer Iris Ng.

“To me, just going back and exploring all this was so amazing,” added Rau, who was grateful “to be given the chance to see vintage burlesque and explore the history and actually meet the women.”

“Camille and I were the generation when it was making a transition from the burlesque show with Gypsy Rose Lees and the Tempest Storms (the 88-year-old burlesque legend will also be at Hot Docs with the doc Tempest Storm),” explained Stein.

Canadian burlesque dancer Judith Stein, 68, gets the audience to pull off her trailing striped trousers to “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long” as part of her act.
(Storyline Entertainment)

The peelers took over from vaudeville, said Stein. But they kept the comedy, which was also a big part of burlesque. Stein’s act included enlisting the audience to pull off her trailing striped trousers to “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long.”

While Stein worked mostly in bars and “beer parlours,” Sands was a feature performer at burlesque theatres, working with elaborate costumes. Some dancers worked with a live band, the drummer hitting the snare to accentuate each bump and grind.

Around 1980, the business changed. Nobody wanted the slow build of an elaborate striptease or 20-minute acts with fancy costumes. “We were up against full frontal nudity” and stripper poles, said Stein.

It made Camille 2000’s 1970s pasties and net panties seem quaint. She retaliated by crafting an “aggressive” performance art strip show: a tribute to the Marquis de Sade that featured hot wax and provocative knife play.

The film often touches on feminism and empowerment, including a scene where Stein asserts that women of her generation gave today’s women their freedom.

“Feminism wasn’t about burning your bra and not shaving your legs; feminism was (about) shaving your legs and working in a bar as a sex object but knowing that you were and not trading your p---- and your soul for a wedding ring,” Stein says onscreen.

Judith Stein in her heydey in the 1970s. Burlesque's renewed popularity with young people encouraged Stein to get back into it in recent years. (Courtesy of Judith Stein)

Nobody has the right to judge her choices about how she earned a living, said Stein — and it was a good one, too, about $500 a week when she started out in 1972.

“I’ve supported this cause and been part of this cause for the right to choose my life and you’re telling me there are certain things I cannot do?” said Stein.

Shane Smith, Hot Docs director of programming, said the “celebratory story of powerful women” is a film that will resonate with an opening-night audience as it explores the stories of dancers who “took hold of opportunities that were presented to them and made the most of them at a time when there weren’t a lot of opportunities for women.”

Now burlesque is hot again, said Stein, embraced by a new generation of young dancers. Invited to join them, she started to dance with local burlesque reviews about seven years ago. And she has a home-based business sewing demure flannel nighties.

For Sands, who was reluctant to return to the stage, it took some convincing. When she did, it was to perform a lavish tribute to her late partner, a moving moment in the documentary.

“For 10 years they asked me . . . and I refused to perform,” said Sands.

“I wanted to be remembered how I was . . . I look in the mirror and I think, ‘When did this fat old broad take over?’ I know I don’t look the same, but inside I’m still that young burlesque dancer and it’s never left me. I’m very sure of myself. I’m a very confident woman. I know I’m not 20 years old anymore, but I know I still got it.”

More than 200 films are screening at this year’s Hot Docs festival, which runs until May 8. Go to http://hotdocs.ca/ hotdocs.caEND for more information.

Judith Stein, left, and Camille Sands are both profiled in "League of Exotique Dancers." Stein is known as the “Grand Beaver of Canadian Burlesque,” while Sands adopted the stage persona “the girl for yesterday, today and tomorrow.” (Vince Talotta / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

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